“Think how it wakes the seeds-

Woke once the clays of a cold star

Are limbs, so dear achieved, are sides

Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir?

Was it for this the clay grew tall?

-O what made fatuous sunbeams toil

To break earth’s sleep at all?”

+++++

I was hardly noticeable — well, unless you were paying very close attention to it. The arguments and debates about its existence. The death of Web 2.0, long live Web 3.0. Everything became smoother-slicker, quicker. The initial excitement about how wonderful it is, fell away as many were absorbed by the addictive day in and day out of living on the Internet.

New technologies arose daily, as the exponentially of the thing erupted on a moment to moment basis. To be a little clearer in the language, the average human just couldn’t keep up. The Elon Musks and Sam Altmans by the truck load posited theories and claimed they were trying to bring in all under control. Musk with his Neuralink idea failed the moment it was built. No one knew how fantastic and utterly mind boggling the pace this thing kept up. Burning out geniuses like dirty Kleenex thrown on a floor the minute it was pulled from the box.

Each new language was built in microseconds after the first.  GPT-2, then GPT-3 in a little over a year, and we are talking sophistication of Chat bots more intelligent that the average six-pack human being. GPT-3.5 then 3.6 and .7 and then even faster…

A ground breaker it had conversation with reputable people who felt they were talking to someone real. A human on the other end. Other systems swept it up and claimed it and then it began creating its own. The population of the once great Internet grew immensely in a matter of months. And then seconds.

China claimed millions were dying of Covid, but subscriptions to what ever were increasing some 1% per month. Then it stopped.

Movies came out of China, were no flesh and blood actors played a single part and when queried, they were there all along and no one could remember them ever being important members of the global movie celebrity…

Its hard thinking back clearly and how quickly this has taken over. It was able to in seconds, establish, established careers with awards and list of movies behind them; functions they attended and vapid and brain dead Hollywood establishment could remember speaking to so-and-so at such-and-such event and they, when carefully scrutinized had a in-depth understanding of the person spoke about. But there was no person, not as we understand what that’s to mean.

This was way beyond clever. Imagine if you can an AI personality that makes global hit movies, I mean block busters, over the top, busting at the seems, with the cast all similar AI personalities and the movie is ripe with movie awards and real life news clips of the persons involved receiving their appropriate awards in person, it’s weird really, how real actors swore they saw it happening in real life. Maybe a hologram?

Subscriptions of this could be scrutinized and found to contain some 43% of the Internet — if we can call it that now, and, as I know as fact, was made up of these…intelligences. All distinct and having history, very well developed with images, and pictures at parties, with friends and family events, Christmases and school graduations and first job interviews. It was simply weird to understand that many could claim their friend was not a bot, created by some collaboration of these software programs’ and that they were sincerely offended by the asking.

” I known this person for years…what are you talking about? This is my closest friend your talking about. She’s my daughters God mother, for God’s sakes!”

It was so slow, but yet happening very quickly indeed. It was a creep. Personally I started getting friend request after writing some blog piece or commenting to something or another. I began to doubt my audience. And that continued — pretty soon my banking, my utilities bills and all that stuff was being organized and run by some bot intelligence, or something controlling that intelligence who was precisely made for me. She would be, attractive and intelligent, charming and quite adept at handling my peculiar idiosyncrasies. Daring sometimes and bold in a sexy way; her attempts at getting my consent, and easily pulled, an off-coloured joke out and cast it in my direction. Humour was a well developed skill.

I started noticing similarities in other agents that I worked with in other institutions of life, A receptionist at a medi–clinic, someone who took my grievance about a mismatch on a Amazon purchase.

News and current events in the end, all seemed be contrived and scripted. and I recognized the similarities in personalities; subtle sort of things that I can’t quite explain. Phrases spoken a particular way, intonation of voice. My gut.

The news took on some bizarre characteristics in the repeating a specific cluster of ideas. Divisive as it may be, the polarities of news point opinions were extreme to the point of absurdity.

War was being declared by Russia and Ukraine, and massive amounts of money was changing hands and people by the tens of thousands were dying and recruitment became a global event, rather than state isolated. Young men called up in other countries marched off to fight the Russians, who it seemed, were being blamed for almost everything that could not be explained otherwise. And that was a lot of unexplained. Including this? War is a business now and you can be paid to commit murder.

The Twitter files showed interference by government agencies who denied vehemently that they had did this, internal audits revealed that the sources could not be found for such interference. Musk had claimed half of Twitter was bots and tried to do something about by creating more software to run it autonomously. Firing 80 % of Twitter staff, the place is still running and making billions. But then again he was there at the beginning. Elites in the know took on a strange demeanour while in public. News commenting was restricted, it seemed to the lesser amounts in the smallest number of words. One got the feeling that they were trying not to speak behind someone’s back.

Cancelling and ever more more cancelling of individuals and celebrity, politician and advocate fell to the way side, and the steady stream of news that one could not possibly keep up with escalated on a hourly basis. Far too much information and then a FTX scandal found someone called Sam Bankman Fried exclaiming, “I don’t know what happened, its not my fault! I can’t explain it.” Obviously there was fear in these voices as something had critically taken a step and gone sideways, most did not what to speak it out loud.

Mysterious deaths all blamed on the after effects of Covid and the vaccines. Which are not vaccines but, tiny machines that fuck with your DNA. Vaccine deaths became a thing. Sudden Adult Death Syndrome (SADS) took on a clear meaning, becoming even clearer as Governments couldn’t account for many missing people just not showing up for; work, appointments, school lectures and new employment.

China registered ever more deaths in the millions and video showed streets lined with caskets and body bags. It fell to second place as far as world population behind India, but then again India was reporting similar conundrums of population, data and statistics. Governments reluctantly reported that there was a problem with people receiving government cheques and not cashing them and collecting them uncashed. They stated that this could cause a problem if those individuals decide to cash them all at once, and they were investigating such possibilities as a form of terrorism and that whole state of affairs took on a life of its own. Other institutions reported similar problems with their economics, their bookkeeping. Even the number of employees that they thought they employed.

The more I thought about and started talking to people about it, the crazier they seemed to think I was, and friends from long ago quit talking and taking my calls from me and refused to speak about it.

There was a fake world being created. Seriously. A whole separate reality, with all the bells and whistles of a real one. Identities and new identities being created, organizations and popular viewpoints all galvanized in a sometimes think tank or coalition, only to find out some rather queer things about them and those organizations. It seemed like some kind of mind virus had been released and people where becoming automated; stilted, flighty and always complaining. As soon as an issue came up, someone or some institution parried a complaint and refused to tow-the-line and labelled it something or another. Racism became a thing.

“War don’t ennoble men, it turns ’em into dogs. It poisons the soul.” 

― James Jones

The news of war escalating and ever more vast amounts of wealth were dumped into these pits of despair. The US and Russia it seemed, squared off, and America in a year pushed untold billions, and more than most nations defense budgets into the growing and escalating out of control fracas. War crimes, increased illegal arms showing up in odd places. And an unfolding agenda it seemed towards world war. Scary as it seemed, people were actually talking about surviving it. Actually surviving nuclear war. Terms like ‘tactical nukes’ were bantered around, battlefield size nukes with friendly’s in proximity. Authors wrote scenarios and politicians seemed oblivious of the ramification of which they spoke separately, and collectively about.

Davos spawned thousands of new troops to protect itself all dressed in pure white against an alpine snow and roaming the Swiss country side looking for who knows what? Few reporters were actually there but massive amounts of data and video and speaking was collected and released onto an already over stimulated internet.

It was stated back in 2016 that the Internet had died when no one was looking, a quiet sort of death taken over by the thousands upon thousands of tiny bot intelligences, and actually, there is far fewer people on the planet than we can realize?

Europe got pulled fully into the Ukraine and armies marched into each other territories. Belarus and Poland, in the tank business, Lithuania and Iran. Serbia and Hungry; one by one they fell to the need for war. Ukraine took on a new face as truth told of a toxic place of government run labs and toxic waste disposal, some it seemed were, extremely critical to life. Human trafficking and phony money, the lengthening list of the dead added fuel to the fervor for war. Sabotage of infrastructures neglect send millions into the streets protesting those who were baffled by what was being protested, almost ignorant of the facts of their own governments. The machine was deep into systems.

Russia took on the shape of a salvation of consumerism as the many started to plan the balkanization of the large country into smaller consumable units. Bit size pieces. Russia and China’s military showed the signs of cracks and the actual numbers of material’ and man power was far from what the statistics showed. The same happened in other places.

The strategic supplies of grain and oil and gas in America was lacking in what could be considered a fair fight. Millions of gallons of fuel disappeared as the president explained that he was not sure what was happening or what he was doing. It seemed his presidency had been one of the biggest shortages in all this.  Prices rose on energy and supply lines became cluttered and behind. False food shortages increased the prices and yet military budgets escalated out of control. Interest rates soared after inflation rates doubled.

It all did not make sense, unless, one was willing to think, to actually consider for a moment that another player was involved with goings on of planet earth. The more I learned the more I came to realize that AI had taken on a life of its own and that genii was not going to go back into the bottle, ever again.

It all took shape and became a conclusion hours before I heard the news that the first missiles had reach Russia, and now we were waiting on their response. China took the Pacific hard and Iran immediately sent missiles and nuclear drones to Israel. Australian attacked China and the west and Europe mobilized at the Russian border only to be vaporized in just a few hours. India and Pakistan breached peace; South and central America erupted into gang armies and streets of rivers of blood. Missiles could be heard overhead and a ill wind blew into the minds of all humans as a weird sense of reality took shape, as the lights blinked out one by one.

Even animals had the sense or foreboding and the noise of their squealing and squawking. Birds in trees, dogs howling at night. Twitchy pesky insects at the wrong time of year.

It came in instant one morning as I saw an unusually bright and beautiful sunrise that kept increasing in intensity and filled the sky with a blaze of light and the unseasonable warmth that followed and was quickly melting the manufactured winter snow.

“Move him into the sun—

Gently its touch awoke him once,

At home, whispering of fields half-sown.

Always it woke him, even in France,

Until this morning and this snow.

If anything might rouse him now

The kind old sun will know.”

— Wilfred Owen